Digital BW, The Print

Mark Tucker wrote:

>--- In DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint@y..., grdglass@a... wrote:
>  
>
>>Before you took up that configuration with your Hassy, did you 
>>    
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>try any 
>  
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>>Photoshop filters or plug-ins?
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>>
>
>
>Those Photoshop filters just seem "wrong" to me, on some 
>level. Some things seem OK to use in Photoshop; other 
>functions seem to cross the line. I feel that way too with those 
>fake Photoshop borders; it's just plain wrong.
>

How does it differ in print production from taking various elements from 
different and combining them in layers?

Or for that matter using a contact screen or on-enlarger filter to do 
the same in silver printing?

It's one thing to present such and image as "reality" or news, but for 
editorial, feature, or art work, I see no effective difference Mark.. 
(and I held your position in the early 90s)   IMHO: For the most part, 
these filters just make easier, or more efficient, processes you can 
replicate through non-plug-in methods..  Art, for me,  comes down to 
vision, and use of whatever tool to convey that vision... Pollock and 
others used house paints, Lichtenstein adopted "halftones",etc..

To me, the debate about whether digitally manipulated images are art  is 
long since settled... Instead, now we have moved to trying to define the 
limits of that manipulation..  I find that inherently 
counterproductive.  When photos first became a part of our culture the 
same debate raged..  Portrait and scenic painters decried the photo as 
"not ART"...  Eventually, publicly acclaimed painters eventually used 
photos as part of their workflow, or actually produced photos 
themselves.. Now, with digital moving into significantly more abstract 
and/or traditional styles of art, the debate rages again..  In the end, 
we all waste our breath...  The public will, in the end value art for 
what it says to them -- not for what tools we used to produce it..    As 
artists, critics,  and gallery  owners, individuals have these anal 
little discussions about what "is" a technique that constitutes "art."   
To us, tools are important as a means to expression.. To viewers, it is 
the "impression" that counts...

Strangely, I have often questioned whether my own work is ART... Even 
more strangely, 9-11 has, in some sense answered that for me...  I was 
talking at a political meeting to one of the most 
conservative/mainstream people I know..  I had brought some prints to 
show to a friend at the meeting and another friend suggested the 
aforementioned conservative woman might like to see my work...  She 
immediately asked about buying one of the B&W InfraRed WTC sepia 
prints... in discussing it, at one point,  she said "well I really don't 
know a lot about art" -- this from someone who has made "good taste" a 
hallmark of her character... The fact that she felt my prints were 
"art," in such a basic way, answered a host of questions with which I 
had long struggled.  

Keith
 
 



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